The other night, I made the mistake of flipping through the channels before the St. Louis Cardinals let Brad Lidge humiliate the Houston Astros himself, and I stumbled across the local CBS affiliate and the nightly broadcast of 60 Minutes.
I half-sorta listened to the Andy Rooney piece while doing some kind of kitchen or cooking chore. It had something to do with too many people in America (I’d agree in Andy Rooney’s case) and his solution for it.
Since he didn’t say the words Final Solution or Fourth Reich I figured I didn’t have to pry the gold fillings from my teeth and conceal them in an acid solution before fleeing the country.
A few minutes later, my podcatching software grabbed the audio track of his piece. So, I had it available for my morning commute to work.
You know. When I wanted to listen to it.
Not while eating..
Not while in the bathroom taking a dump.
Not while I’m trying to clean the litterboxes.
Nope, Andy. My choice is to listen while I’m on my way to work.
Since I’m a lazy typist, I stumbled to CBS’s website and grabbed the text from his piece…
(A word of warning: Do not click on the “Next Image” link. What you’ll see is the hideous mutant offspring that Andy has somehow cloned up in his workshop by combining his DNA with that of one of his beloved departed bulldogs.)
Television shows would be available when viewers wanted them, not when the networks felt like showing them.
Well, that’s amazing. A man from the Golden Age Of Television recognizes that the tyranny of the programming schedule imposed upon the public by the broadcast MSM is a miserable failure and a dismal, decaying business model.
Bully for Andy! Thank you from freeing us, O Harriet Tubman Of Television! Forty Channels and a mule for everyone!
But, this being Andy Rooney, he has to remind us that as a fossil from the Golden Age Of Television, that he’s utterly out of touch with the current technologies or, sadly, logic itself:
For example, 60 Minutes might be broadcast Sunday at 6 a.m., 3 p.m. and midnight.
Okay, so I’m a little confused here. Andy says that viewers could watch the shows when they wanted to watch them, not when the networks felt like showing them, and then presents a “Flying Car/World Of Tomorrow” scenario where… the television networks feel like showing them at three different times instead of one.
Ah, yes. Thank you, Andy Rooney, for overthrowing the tyranny of the television network schedule and presenting us with a dream of the technologies and freedoms of tomorrow where carefree former slave-drone viewers now have the expanded choice of three different times instead of one.
You know, because that’s when they want to watch them.
Besides being famous for being an anti-Semitic prick, Henry Ford was famous for his Model T car, which when challenged that it didn’t give much choice in features or colors (ie. no choice at all), he’d say People have a choice of color as long as it’s black.”
Thank you, Andy Rooney, for offering to cast aside the dreary days of the tyranny of the broadcasting schedule and shackle us with a slightly looser chain to it. Thank you for suggesting we do away with one shade of black and replace it with three.
As for the parting offer at the end of your piece:
If you disagree with this idea, write me a letter but save yourself some money and don’t mail it.
When I last checked, Andy, sending an e-mail was free.
(Ask your grandchildren what that is if you’ve never heard of it, Andy)
